Retirement outcomes are built over decades, but the choices that shape them are often made by different people, in different institutions and at different points in an employee’s working life. New Old Mutual Corporate research gives CFOs a way to test whether the choices their organisations influence are turning employee-benefit spend into better retirement outcomes.
South Africa’s retirement challenge is well established. What has been harder to see is where the system is beginning to shift and which decisions are influencing the outcome.
For CFOs, the issue extends beyond the value employees receive from the benefit. Contribution structures affect current employment costs, while employees who cannot afford to retire as planned can create longer-term workforce, succession and benefit-cost pressures for the organisation.
OnTrack research is beginning to show where the picture is moving. Among members within five years of retirement, the proportion with more than nine times their annual salary saved increased from between 4% and 8% in 2025 to between 6% and 10% in 2026 year-to-date.
This is meaningful movement, although the percentages remain low. It is appearing alongside other shifts. Preservation is improving, normal retirement ages are moving upwards, and a greater share of savings is being converted into retirement income rather than taken as cash.
Keri-Lee Edmond, head of business intelligence at Old Mutual Corporate, has examined data across hundreds of thousands of occupational retirement fund members through Old Mutual Corporate’s OnTrack analysis to understand the choices behind these outcomes. The research identifies six measurable levers that influence retirement over time: pensionable salary, contribution rate, preservation, investment strategy, retirement age and annuitisation.
“The future of retirement in South Africa will depend on how effectively we pull multiple levers in reinforcing directions,” says Keri-lee.
The choices employees inherit
Retirement outcomes are rarely shaped in one place. Within an organisation, CFOs help shape decisions on pensionable salary, contribution arrangements and normal retirement age. Funds govern the investment strategy and the options supporting preservation and annuitisation, while employees make choices within the arrangements available to them. Over time, those decisions converge in the financial outcome the employee ultimately experiences.
Pensionable salary shows how easily this can happen. A contribution rate of 15% may appear healthy, but if it is calculated on only 70% of salary, it is effectively 10.5% of total earnings. OnTrack research shows that at least 40% of employers still define pensionable salary at 80% or less of gross pay. The effect may be barely noticeable from month to month, but over a working lifetime it can materially alter the eventual outcome.
“Rather than separate switches, the six levers are gears in the same machine,” says Keri-Lee. That idea captures the essence of the research. A decision in one part of the system can reinforce another, or weaken it, and the result depends on how those choices work together over time.
Preservation can influence behaviour
When employees change jobs, one of the most important decisions they face is what to do with the retirement savings they have already built up. They can keep those savings invested for retirement or take some or all of the money in cash. Old Mutual Corporate’s preservation analysis for 2023 to 2026 year-to-date shows that the proportion kept invested rose from 39% in 2023 and 2024 to 52% in 2025 and 55% in 2026 year-to-date.
Two-Pot changes the structural picture because two-thirds of new contributions now flow to a retirement component that generally cannot be accessed before retirement. However, the available data does not show that the reform caused the increase recorded above. Preservation decisions on savings built up before Two-Pot still provide a separate indicator of whether member behaviour is shifting.
The broader lesson is that better retirement outcomes cannot depend only on every employee making the ideal financial decision at every stage of a long working life. The six levers show where decisions by employers, funds and members can make stronger outcomes more likely.
The same principle applies at retirement. A large balance is not the final outcome. Those savings still need to be converted into an income that can support a person through retirement, which is why the quality of the outcome depends on the whole journey rather than the size of the fund alone.
What should come next
The early movement in the data also opens a wider conversation about what comes next for South Africa’s retirement system.
The progress in preservation provides reason to examine how the other five levers could be strengthened and how the choices available to members could support better outcomes.
For employers, this means considering how their retirement benefits and employment practices can help employees achieve the best possible outcomes. Understanding the financial impact of these decisions, and how they interact with choices made by members, helps translate the six-lever framework into practical action.
South Africa has spent many years describing the retirement problem. Old Mutual Corporate’s research provides a clearer view of how the outcome is created and where different choices could begin to alter its trajectory.
From research to the wider leadership conversation
Keri-Lee’s research into the six levers shaping retirement outcomes forms part of the thought leadership underpinning this year’s Old Mutual Thought Leaders Forum taking place on 8 October. It reflects a central premise of the 2026 theme, that people live one financial life even though the choices shaping it are often made in separate rooms.
The Old Mutual Thought Leaders Forum brings together leaders from business, government, retirement funds and financial services to examine the choices shaping South Africans’ financial futures.
By bringing these perspectives together, the Forum explores how decisions about employment, employee benefits, savings, investment and retirement income interact over a working lifetime, and what they ultimately create for individuals.
To explore Keri-Lee Edmond’s full research and the six retirement levers, visit oldmutual.co.za/thoughtleadersforum.
